HUNGARIAN LITERATURE
TURKISH LITERATURE

HUNGARIAN LITERATURE

The system of institutions of Hungarian culture underwent a significant change in the 16th century. At first it was a slow process, but in the middle of the century it accelerated. The pioneers of Hungarian literature - those intellectuals who created Erasmist, Protestant, vagant or court literature - started their ways from this changing medieval system of institutions.

Hungarian literature was limited mainly to the monasteries until 1526. After the decline of the medieval state the decline of monasteries became an irreversible process. However, some of the monasteries managed to survive: five or six monasteries of the Paulian order, Franciscan monasteries throughout the country, so they remained important intellectual centers both in Transylvania and in the occupied regions. Nunneries were deserted, although the Clarissans of Nagyszombat and Pozsony survived these times - that is why several Hungarian codices also survived destruction.

The new centers of royal and ecclesiastic patrons

The Turks destroyed Buda in 1526 and in 1541 they occupied it. Between these two dates Hungary had two kings: Ferdinand Habsburg and János Szapolyai. There was no real court - similar to that of King Matthias - at that time, and the lack of this lead to the slow decline of culture. This process, however, was quite ambiguous. In the chaotic political situation the role of intellectuals became more significant, since there were two royal courts and two royal chancelleries at the same time, and neither ruler could do without educated humanist and juristic intellectuals. In 1543 Esztergom fell, and the archbishopric district had to flee to Nagyszombat. The decline of bishopric residences, chapters and monasteries resulted in the collapse of credible places, so the centers of medieval literacy slowly disappeared. However, there were some exceptions. For example, the chapter of Győr managed to survive the war and it was able to preserve humanist traditions under the guidance of Bishop Demeter Náprágyi. So not all the political and ecclesiastical centers - together with royal and ecclesiastic patrons - were demolished. The necessary changes resulted in the increase of the cultural role of Pozsony, Nagyszombat and Transylvania. The royal court had already fled to Pozsony in 1526. As the dignitaries of ecclesiastic districts occupied by the Turks also fled there, it also helped the second flourishing of humanist literature. It was not by chance that the Hungarian counter-reformation later started in Nagyszombat.

The dignitary patrons of literature

During the great political and religious movements the court of dignitaries were havens for literature. The main patrons of Hungarian literature became landowners, who possessed huge estates in the country. The boom in political and religious life, the modernisation of culture and education would have been impossible without dignitary patrons. Cultural centres were established by Tamás Nádasdy in Sárvár-Újsziget, by the Batthyánys in Németújvár, by the Perényis in Sárospatak, by Zsigmond Rákóczi in Vizsoly and by Zsigmond János, Transylvanian principal in Gyulafehérvár. The intellectuals of the age found their homes in the courts of dignitaries. Usually the patrons paid for their studies at foreign universities - as there was no university in Hungary, they also supported the publishing of books and left their marks on the spirit of literature. Towns and market towns also played an important role in the change of literature: Lőcse, Bártfa, Sopron, Debrecen, Kolozsvár, and even Tolna and Ráckeve in the occupied regions brought up and supported their own bourgeois and peasant-bourgeois intellectuals.

The spread of the Hungarian language

At around 1526 the use of the Hungarian language became more and more frequent in correspondence: missales and sometimes charters were composed in Hungarian, and the Latin language was gradually pushed back. The reasons for this change are not at all clear. National feeling inspired by Turkish rule, the development of public education, the programme of the renewal of religion in the vernacular and the role of women who wanted to study but did not speak Latin might all have been significant factors in this process. At the end of the 16th century Hungarian letters were full of Latinisms, but in the beginning the direct expressions, similies and proverbs of the spoken language had been in use. This had an impact on the language of literature as well. Nuns, who left their orders taught young girls how to write. Clerks who were familiar with letter writing were highly respected by not only illiterate noblemen but also the Turks. In the 16th century the pashas of Buda corresponded with their Christian enemy, including the Habsburg court, in Hungarian.

Book printing

The bookprinter as a mediator between the patron and literature

The spread of the Hungarian language in the field of communication, entertainment, education and religious life developed in parallel with the rapid spread of book printing. The richest patrons of literature were founding printing houses in royal Hungary and Transylvania one after the other (there were no printing houses in the territories occupied by the Turks). Besides the patron and the writer attention also must be paid to the printer in the system of institutions of literature. Tamás Nádasdy invited Benedek Abádi to his estate in Sárvár-Újsziget to help him print the first book in the Hungarian language: János Sylvester's New Testament (1541). The writer and the printer were frequently one and the same: Péter Bornemisza founded his own moving printing house in royal Hungary to publish his own works. In royal Hungary one needed a privilege to run a printing house, but in Transylvania permission was not needed. Most Hungarian printing houses served the interests of the Reformation. The printing house founded by Gáspár Heltai and Georg Hoffgreff in 1550 in Kolozsvár was also a successful business, thanks to the publishing of Hungarian literary works and translations.

The spread of literary texts

Paper was in general use for printing literary texts by this time, and was much cheaper than parchment (one twenty-first), although it was quite difficult to obtain. Usually it was imported - from German or Polish paper mills. Water marks referred to the place of origin. The first Hungarian paper mill was founded in Lőcse at the beginning of the 16th century. Only a few manuscripts survived from the 16th century. A proof-sheet was made of the setting, and the author corrected the mistakes on the proof-sheet. There were professional proof-readers: sometimes János Sylvester and Albert Szenci Molnár also worked as a proof-reader. For example, Gáspár Károlyi's own proof-sheet was preserved, which he made for the Vizsoly Bible. Printing did not completely retard hand-written books, as texts were often spread in hand-written manuscripts. A lot of manuscripts survived which did not appear in printing for various reasons. For example, the majority of love poems of the period survived only in manuscript songbooks. Although the printing of literary works on the topic of love was not officially banned, the churches - both the Protestant and the Catholic - fought against it, and the majority of printing houses were under the strict supervision of the church.

Printed books

The spiritual development of the 16th century was closely related to Johann Gutenberg's 15th-century invention, the type-founding and the press, even in Hungary. At first the printed materials imitated codices, the decorated manuscript models of the previous century. After 1550, however, practical solutions were preferred, so the printed book became different from the manuscripts. Printing, make-up, decoration and illustration developed in a totally new direction. There were various sizes of books, ranging from huge, folio-size to tiny, hand-size books. The complex, hierarchic typography reflected the structure of the text following medieval, scholastic patterns. Paragraphs were first used in this period. The cover-page became much simpler, the type-setting was easy to survey, quick orientation was helped by headings, and there were marginalia at the edge of the pages. Instead of page numbers there were gathering marks, and guard words ensured the proper order of the pages. In Transylvania there were book binding workshops near printing houses, and these usually reflected the taste of German book printers.

Book trade and libraries

The growing interest in books brought about a slow development in the book trade. Noblemen and Transylvanian principals, who owned significant collections of books, often entrusted students studying at foreign universities with buying books for them. Nevertheless official book agents and book sellers also appeared in Hungary, and in most cases they were responsible for binding the books as well. There are some book seller's catalogues from the 16th century (for example, the one which enlisted Hans Gallen's 604-item stock from 1583). The most significant collections were private ones. For example, Boldizsár Batthány, who had a modern European education, collected contemporary literary pieces, including Spanish romances. The Hungarian humanist scientists of the century or those living in Hungary - for example, Hans Dernschwam, János Zsámboky and András Dudith - also had huge libraries, and they bought these books abroad. Private collections of prelates were usually much bigger than those of ecclesiastic libraries. The books of Miklós Oláh, Miklós Telegdi, Zakariás Mossóczi or Demeter Náprágyi became the basis of later ecclesiastic collections. Smaller libraries of intellectuals and noblemen were also very important. Collections destroyed in wars were mentioned in inventories and notes of the possessors.

The system of education

The language of schools, education and science was still Latin at this time. The renaissance curriculum was compiled according to medieval principles, the so-called seven free arts (septem artes liberales). At lower levels the subjects of the trivium were taught: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics (that is logic). At higher levels the subjects of the quadrivium (arithmetics, geometry, astronomy and music) were taught in the elite schools. In the process of education - mainly at primary and secondary levels - the mother tongue played a very important role. Hungarian examples helped in the understanding of the Latin texts in school books. So did multi-lingual collections of dialogues written for children. Students memorised several Latin-Hungarian word pairs day by day, and this process was helped by nomenclatures, that is dictionaries, appearing in print. The curriculum, which was reformed according to humanist principles, aimed at the acquisition of humanities - studia humanitatis. The Hungarian translations of Aesop's fables, Cato's sentences or Horace's odes reflect the demands of schools for a high-level education of grammar and rethoric.

Humanist intellectuals

Besides the churches of towns and market towns, parish schools had also been functioning since the Middle Ages. In the age of Reformation, when towns changed their religion, these schools often became the centres of new religious ideas and new Protestant culture. In the schools of Sárospatak, Kolozsvár, Debrecen and Tolna (in the occupied region) the teachers were outstanding Protestant humanists, who were rather significant in Hungarian literature as well. Besides the chapters which survived, there were chapter schools, where the new curriculum was taught, such as the Nagyszombat school reorganised by Archbishop Miklós Oláh. There were other forums of primary and secondary education: the children of Hungarian noblemen and border-fortress officers studied in Viennese provincial schools. The schools in towns became theatrical centres, too: the first Hungarian schools dramas were performed here. Some of the noblemen and dignitaries sent their children to a neighbouring castle or mansion to study instead of a school. At the court of the Batthánys there were several masteres at the same time. However, there were no universities in Hungary. Students went to the universities of Krakow, Vienna, Padua, then Wittenberg and Heidelberg. This was called peregrination. The result of going to foreign universities was that the students had direct connections with the outstanding personalities of the age, they got to know the latest results of scientific research and thus could spread them in Hungary. The highest form of educating Hungarian intellectuals and scientific and religious life was peregrination. Travelling students - visiting one town after another - collected their experiences in travel descriptions and diaries. The most successful and the best European travel description in Hungarian was written by Márton Csombor Szepsi: Europica varietas, Kassa, 1620. Students went to study and discover the world: they enrolled in various European universities, they wanted to listen to the lectures of famous professors, since for most of them this was the only possibility to travel in their lives.

Hungarian erasmists

Erasmism

In the decades around the defeat at Mohács the uncrowned king of humanists in Europe was Erasmus of Rotterdam. Hungarian intellectuals read and studied his work even before Mohács - they were the first generation of Hungarian Erasmists. The master added the principles of devotio moderna to humanism and he created a basically new, honest and intimate Christian way of life. At the centre of this was the New Testament published from original Greek text sources. Erasmus often rejected the official teachings of the Catholic church, but he never joined the Reformation. Although he did not write a word in any vulgar language, he encouraged the translation of the Bible into the mother tongue as well as its proliferation. The goal of the second group of Hungarian Erasmists (after Mohács) was to create a Hungarian Bible which would be spread among a wide range of people. The aims of the Hungarian Erasmists were identical with those of the reformists in several cases, but they remained loyal to Catholicism.

National literature

The works of Hungarian Erasmists were the outcome of a unified, well-organised literary conception, and this is why they are different from the works of monastic literature. First they wanted to make the Hungarian language suitable for interpreting the Bible, and only then did they intend to translate the Holy Scripture into Hungarian. They wanted to create an educated Hungarian literary language according to rhetorical principles. They therefore started to study Hungarian linguistics. Their literary programme brought about the renewal of national feeling, and during their work to protect and create the language they were the first to discover and appreciate the beauties of the Hungarian tongue. Their literary organsing work remained outside the conflict between different religions: Reformation did not use the Erasmist Bible translations. However, their activity was not isolated from other literary activities of the period. The Protestant humanist János Baranyai Decsi, who translated Erasmus's collection of proverbs into Hungarian, was the later follower of the Erasmists in respect to the aim to reform the language.

Benedek Komjáti

Benedek Komjáti was Erasmus's follower, and the first to write in Hungarian. In 1533 he published the Hungarian translation of St Paul's letters in Krakow with the support of the Perényi family. This was the first printed book in Hungarian. He did not mention Erasmus by name but in fact he worked from Erasmus's translation, adopted the introductions in front of the letters from him, and also incorporated Erasmus's commentaries into his text. These were introductory steps, but Komjáti's literary consciousness was deep.

Gábor Pesti

The real establishment of Erasmist literary programme was Gábor Pesti's merit, who belonged to the intellectual circles of the royal chancellery. He studied at the university of Vienna, and had very good relations with the Erasmist, anti-Lutheran group of professors. In Vienna in 1536 he published two books in Hungarian: Aesops' fables and the New Testament. Two years later he published Gábor Pesti's six-language dictionary there. He interpreted the ancient Aesop's fables in a simple, clear Hungarian language. His basic aim was to enrich the language and teach moral lessons to people. At the same time he was aware of the fact that the charm of the tales pleased the readers. The Erasmist Gábor Pesti used the same methods when he studied the Bible. The similarities of the Holy Scripture and the ancient works could have been proved by the fact that both used fables.

János Sylvester

The most talented representative of Hungarian Erasmism was János Sylvester (1504-1552). He was the founder of Hungarian linguistic- and literary studies. From 1534 he led the Bible translating workshop together with the printers Johannes Strutius and Benedek Abádi. The workshop functioned at Tamás Nádasy's estate in Sárvár-Újsziget. Simultaneously with the translation of the New Testament he studied the grammatical structure of the Hungarian language. His work entitled Grammatica hungarolatina appeared in 1539, this was the first systematic Hungarian grammar. When describing the sound system of Hungarian he was able to use his knowledge of Hebrew. His complete New Testament published in 1541 followed Erasmus's translations and commentaries. During translation Sylvester recognised that the Hungarian language is suitable for rhythmic poetry: the summary of the books of the New Testament was compiled in distich. The book contains an essay on words with several meanings, in which Hungarian love songs are mentioned for the first time. It was also the first description of the essence of Hungarian poetry.

Hungarian literature in the service of the reformation

The spread of Reformation in Hungary

There is little information about the beginning of the spread of the Reformation in Hungary. It is certain, though, that it began to spread before 1526 among the circles of the royal court. - Louis II and his wife were accused of supporting Luther. Later Maximiliam (Habsburg) I was also interested in Protestantism. Some of the humanists of the Jagello age liked Luther's ideas, and so did some of the members of the second generation of Hungarian Erasmists, such as Queen Maria's chaplain, János Heckel. The new bourgeoisie of towns, who wanted independence, also found the new ideas challenging. The German population of the country stood by the Lutheran Reformation unanimously, and through this the reform of religion was complete for them. The Transylvanian Saxons were led to the camp of Protestants by Johannes Honterus, while the Northern Hungarian Germans were led there by Leonhard Stöckel. Many of the Observant Franciscans saw the sins of dignitaries and the church as the causes of the downfall of the country, even before 1514. This Franciscan radicalism also encouraged the success of the Reformation. The Carthausian Anonym, for example, who wrote the Érdy codex, wanted to stop the spread of 'lethal Lutheran herecy' in monastic orders with his work. The ambition of noblemen to possess more and more estates also contributed to the dissection of Catholic institutions.

The territorial division of the Reformation

By the end of the second half of the century the divided country was a colourful picture concerning religion. In the territory of royal Hungary Catholicism was pushed back to the region of Pozsony. The original unity of Protestantism was soon broken, and the reformists (Calvinists) called sacramentarians pressed forward in Northern Hungary. They had some arguments with the Lutherans in regard to receiving the sacrament. Reformists dominated even in the occupied regions. Their temples were deprived of the pictures of the saints - their destroying of pictures being in harmony with Islam. After the murder of György Fráter (1551) Catholicism was pushed out of Transylvania, which sought to be independent, although it never ceased to exist. During the reign of János II (János Zsigmond) the Reformation not only spread but also gradually became radical: the Unitarians appeared, who rejected the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Their most outstanding representative was Bishop Ferenc Dávid, who stood out from among the Unitarians with his radical views: he refused to praise Christ. He was imprisoned in 1579 because of his views, and died there in the very same year. Kolozsvár soon became a Unitarian town. At the end of the 1570s the Unitarian church split into two parts: from its radical wing the sect of the Sabbatists was formed. For many decades Transylvania provided a haven for refugees, who had to flee because of their religious views (even in Protestant countries) . It was unique in Europe. The heretic religious philosophers who settled here, such as Jacobus Palaeologus, Christian Francken and Matthias Vehe-Glirius, were able to teach in the Unitarian college, and write in a peaceful environment as well as spread their ideas relatively freely. Thus they left their marks on the intellectual life of Transylvania.

The first Hungarian Protestants

The literary programme of the Hungarian reformers to develop the mother tongue was subordinated to religious conflict from the very beginning. The first Hungarian Protestant writers - for example, Mátyás Dévai Bíró and Imre Ozorai - actively fought against Catholic ceremonies and the Latin language used in the church, which was a tool to deceive the people, in their view. They forced their dispute partners to use the mother tongue, as it is shown in Mihály Sztárai's plays and Unitarian dispute dramas. Abstract theological disputes were performed before common people, and the mother tongue was developed for religious purposes. Their basic interest was to make themselves understood, so they wrote in a clear and simple style. There were a lot of educated Protestant humanists among them, who studied at foreign universities. They used their knowledge on ancient Latin and Greek literature for moral and religious purposes. In principle the emphasis was put on moral education, and they rejected the role of literature to provide pleasure. In reality, however, a lot of high-standard literary works were created 'in the name of the Reformation'.

The main genres of the literature of the Reformation

Congregation songs

The Protestants soon realised that Hungarian congregation songs made people enthusiastic and had the force to unite them. Several types of song collections were compiled. These made the songs necessary in religious life available for a broad range of people, selected and regulated ecclesiastic genres, excluding everything they considered objectionable from theological or moral points of view. Although masses were abolished, they needed liturgical and service songs. The graduale collected these. Singing religious songs outside the service was even more popular: communal songs were collected in congregation song books. Protestant identity was best expressed by psalms from the Old Testament. Hungarian composers made their psalm paraphrases one after the other following the patterns of the most significant psalm interpreters of Western Europe, such as Theodore de Beze and George Buchanan. Protestant congregations all tried to compile their own complete books of psalms.

Biblical stories

There was a separate type of Protestant song collection, in which long preaching songs devoted to private reading and narrative religious (Biblical stories and other) works were collected. A nice example of this is the Hoffgreff song book (Kolozsvár, 1554-1555). Educational songs which preached the ideas of the Reformation with great enthusiasm and prophetic zeal were also included in them. Their preacher authors saw the causes of the downfall of the country and success of Turkish conquest in the widely spread sins. The historical picture of Hungarian Protestantism was formed by Hungarian students studying at foreign universities according to the so-called Wittenberg historical view based on Luther's and especially Philip Melanchthon's points of view originating from medieval principles. According to the Wittenberg view the end of the world was quite close, and the Turks coming in the name of the Antichrist were God's punishment for the sins of the world. András Farkas's song written in 1538 about the Hungarian and Jewish nations drew a parallel between the history of the Old Testament Jews and that of the Hungarians. He tried to prove that as the destruction of the Jewish people was a consequence of their sins, God punished the Hungarians in the same way. This Jewish-Hungarian parallel in fate became very popular in Hungarian literature. It appeared in Miklós Zrínyi's epic poem and Kölcsey's Hymn. The same thought was represented by András Szkárosi Horváth with even greater poetic force. In his poem about malediction he called down Moses' Biblical curse upon the sinful Hungarians. The Wittenberg historical view applied to the Hungarian situation had a great impact on the anti-Turkish propaganda of the 16-17th century.

Collections of preaching and Bible translations

A great part of the prosaic works of the Reformation included collections of preaching, that is postillas. They reached their educational goals through examples used in preaching - these often turned into enjoyable stories or anecdotes. Another part of Protestant prosaic literature included polemic, disputing works. However, the greatest impact on Hungarian literary language was made by Bible translations. Besides Gáspár Károlyi several anonymous translators worked on the Vizsoly Bible (1590). These translated texts - in spite of the revisions - played a significant role in Hungarian literature until the 20th century. In all probability Péter Melius Juhász also translated the whole New Testament, but it was lost. Miklós Bogáti Fazekas wrote a special paraphrase about the Song of Songs, which used a lot of tools of Hungarian love poetry. There was whole group of Bible translators around the Heltai press in Kolozsvár, but their work remained incomplete.

Gáspár Heltai

One of the most outstanding and talented figures of 16th-century Hungarian prosaic literature was Gáspár Heltai. His origin was German, his original name was Kaspar Helth, and he was born into a Transylvanian Saxon family. As a printer from Kolozsvár he soon became one of the most respected writers of Hungarian prose. The Hungarian of his 'Dialogue on the Dangers of Drunkenness and Living in Luxurious Abundance' (1552) was sometimes inaccurate, but it was compensated by the liveliness of his dialogues and the richness of the language. His One Hundred Fables (1556) was based on Aesop's tales and it gives the original atmosphere of the German source. In contrast to Gábor Pesti's straight-forward but rigorous tales Heltai's sentences are still lively, fresh and humorous even today. His book entitled 'The Net' is an adaptation of the adventurous story of inquisition about a Spanish monk, who left his convent. He was rather significant as a historiographer, too. His Chronicle appeared in 1575 - after his death. He rewrote Bonfini's work and adapted it to the Hungarian situation. This book was written in the Matthias-cult. Heltai was the first to apply the moral Protestant historical view to Hungarian history.

Péter Bornemisza

Besides Gáspár Heltai, Péter Bornemisza was one of the most outstanding writers of 16th-century Hungarian prose. His huge life-work served the Reformation. His talent as a writer was reflected in each of his words - his works are enjoyable even today. As a poet, however, he did not write much, but his farewell poem I am Miserable, written in the 1550s, is one of the briefest pieces of Hungarian secular poetry. During his studies in Vienna his professor, Georgius Tanner, gave him Sophocles' Electra, which he translated into Hungarian, and performed together with his fellow-students (Vienna, 1558). This play was the clearest manifestation of Protestant humanism. Bornemisza not only closely followed the development of Hungarian literature, but wanted to make it richer still following the examples of ancient classical authors, such as Cicero, and contemporary nations. The basic idea of his work is completely Protestant: with the fall of Aigisthos and Kluthaimnes he preached against murder and lechery, the most serious sins against God. In contrast, he accepted killing a tyrant. Similarly to Gáspár Heltai, he totally rewrote and modernised his source. He transformed the choir of the Greek drama into a single character. He also created a new figure, whose name is Parasitus. He is the prototype of later court intriguers.

Péter Bornemisza's new book, Devilish ghosts was published in 1578, which made a great impact on contemporary readers, and it is probably one of the most interesting writing from the 16th century. According to sources in Wittenberg Bornemisza collected most of the devil stories of world history, emphasising the immense evil in the Devil, who tempts people to lechery, and the defenselessness of man. He openly talked about the sexual sins of the period, including his own and those of the dignitaries (for example, the Balassi, the Perényi or the Török family). The appearance of the Devilish Ghosts was a great scandal. This book is a great source of ethnographic and cultural historical data. We can read the first known charming prayers - containing extremely archaic and pagan elements. Bornemisza heard these prayers from a woman called Mrs Benedek Tardoskeddi Szerencse. Charming prayers were rejected by official church forums. Similar folklore texts were found in living folk traditions in great numbers by the ethnographers of our century. Péter Bornemisza recorded two trufas as well, the hero of which was the well-known jester, Balázs Trágár of Eulenspiegel type. From the Devilish Ghosts it clearly turns out that not only Salamon's and Markalf's jokes were spread by word of mouth but also the stories of Balázs Trágár, sometimes they were written down.

Albert Szenci Molnár

Albert Szenci Molnár was the one who completed the literary programme of Protestant humanism. He spent almost all his life abroad, in German-speaking regions, but his activities served only the Hungarian Reformation and science. His linguistic and literary works were in a harmonious unity together with his theological works. His Hungarian Grammar (Hanau, 1610) and his popular Latin-Hungarian, Hungarian-Latin Dictionary (Nürnberg, 1604; Hanau, 1611; Heidelberg, 1621) brought Hungarian science up to a European level, and gave Hungarian literary language a firm basis. He was the one who gave the Calvinist church a complete book of psalms. The Psalterium ungaricum (Herbron, 1607) is the form-perfect interpretation of Huguenot psalms. The 130 different verse structures reflected French melodies - which sounded strange to Hungarian people - in Hungarian. He was also very good at Bible studies, theology and philosophy, sometimes he had time for poetic games (Lusus poetici, Hanau, 1614) and picture poems.

Poetry, folk culture

The place of poetry in literature

One of the most interesting sections of old Hungarian literature contains genres and works of art, which were written for a wide range of people regardless of their religion, social level and education. This public literature was not at all homogenous, there were several types of authors and readers. The common feature of popular literary genres was comprehensibility. This type of literature was not distinct from the others: in Protestant preaching, dialogues and different occasional poems there was a certain openness towards profane literature. Funny wedding songs performed at wedding ceremonies, or the christening songs preserved this double genre - secular and ecclesiastical - at least for a certain period of time. From the end of the 16th century Protestant literature became more and more gloomy: 'practical' jokes were no longer understood nor tolerated. The elements of common poetry were integrated into court culture only in a modified, noble form. A nice example is Balassi's folk figures in his Fine Hungarian Comedy, or his 'latrican' poem about 'Viennese flowers'. In these the court poet expressed his superiority over the commonplace.

Vagant poetry

We do not know any real, authentic 16th-century folk songs: nobody wanted to record the pieces of illiterate, oral tradition song poetry at that time. However, we have some information about certain pieces of the repertoire of travelling students, called 'violinists' - this is the borderline between literacy and illiterate poetry. Hungarian equivalents of vagant poetry, which flourished throughout Europe, were performed everywhere, including pubs and noble courts. Love songs, dance songs and dance words, that is satirical verses, were sung according to the taste of the audience. The Mischievous Song, which was preserved in the Job codex of Fanchali, was not a real poem, but a series of such: it collected the vulgar topics and genres of the anonymous minstrels of the century. These songs are about robbery, drunkenness, making fun of a spinster, a girl in love, 'breaking the pot' - that is rape -, a love affair of a noble lady with her own coachman. These 'mischievous' or obscene scenes follow one another in this special poem, which can be related to the oldest generation of folk songs.

Historical songs

A more educated group of minstrels was gradually becoming distinct from folk 'entertainers'. They turned away from oral literary forms towards literacy. Although they also called themselves 'violinists' or 'luters' like their less sophisticated colleagues, they looked down on pub musicians. The poetic means of illiterate poetry and the violinist behaviour itself often appeared in their poetry in ironic forms. Instead of light-minded topics they chose historical ones. They tried to defend their poems from unauthorised users with the aid of acrostics and colophons. They were the authors of historical songs. The oldest historical song is from King Matthias' time, it is Szabács's struggle. The song about the occupation of a fortress near the river Száva on 15 February, 1457 had quite a modern rhyme pattern - several scholars have doubts about its authenticity. Demeter Csáti describes The Acquisition of Pannonia in his poem which was rich in archaic alliterations. He was a Franciscan monk from the beginning of the 16th century. Mihály Szilágyi's and László Hagymási's stories were preserved in folk ballads and in the poetry of the neighbouring nations. Péter Ilosvai Selymes wrote several historical songs, but he became famous for a single poem about Miklós Toldi adapted by János Arany.

The great master of this genre was undoubtedly Sebestyén Tinódi. Today he would be a war correspondent: he was present on the battlefields of Turkish-Hungarian conflicts and informed people about the latest news walking from fortress to fortress. He recited his poems himself, composing music for them and singing them, encouraging warriors throughout the country. His songs were collected in a book, which was published in his life by Georg Hoffgreff in Kolozsvár. The 1554 Cronica - as it is shown in the title - was a verse history in Hungarian. It was highly respected, similarly to humanist historiography. Tinódi considered communicating reality more important than fiction and decorative poetry. Humanists acknowledged his merits as a historiographer. János Zsámboki translated his poem about the battle for the fortress of Eger into Latin. Data proving the historic authenticity of Tinódi's poems turns up even today.

Ferenc Wathay

Ferenc Wathay lived and worked at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries He acquired his literary skills as a border fortress soldier. His life was the typical life of soldier. He was captured by the Turks in Székesfehérvár during the 1602 siege. He was imprisoned in the fortress of Galata in Constantinople for years. In the prison he compiled a book of songs from his own poems and also wrote his biography. He knew Balassi's poetry without experiencing courtly love. He wrote Protestant Bible stories and religious songs, but the majority of his works were historical songs, soldiers' songs and lyrical pieces - related to the popular love songs of manuscripts - written in Tinódi's style. His most beautiful poem is the nightingale song to his wife who was in far-away Hungary. This poem contains elements from prisoners' songs known from folk song collections. He decorated his manuscript with hand-painted, naive illustrations. We can recognise the impact of Turkish miniature painting in these touching water-colours. The Wathay song book is a summary of 16th-century communal poetry. This culture was related to the vernacular programme of Protestantism, but it barely reached humanist or court spheres. In the 17th century several more modern means were used to form public opinion. The place of historical songs was taken by newspapers and political publicism, and baroque epic poems.

Elite poetry, court culture

The birth of court culture

National language was consciously turned into a literary language by court poets. The theory and practice of writing songs in the language of common people was the merit of the Middle Ages, not of the Renaissance. Court love poetry was already flourishing in the 11-13th centuries in Provansal, Toscan and Sicilian courts. In the age of Dante court poetry was called 'the sweet, new style' (dolce stil nuovo). The innovations of this style were the topic of love and the court cult of women, and 'sweet' meant the rhetoric sophistication of the language, as Dante put it 'excellent vernacular'. Balassi and his students compiled a homogenous literary programme from the topic of love and the desire to elaborate the vernacular. This programme was put into reality - thanks to Balassi's extraordinary talent.

Love stories

At the same time as Bálint Balassi's appearance - probably under his and his poet friends' influence - love stories in verse became very popular by the last third of the 16th century. They appeared in paperback, and people read them until they were threadbare. The poet of Euralius and Lucretia, written in Sárospatak in 1577, was unknown. The author, the Anonym of Patak, adapted a Latin erotic short story in the style of Hungarian court poetry. The poetic language of the work is so similar to that of Balassi's court love poetry that many people think Balassi himself must have written it. Balassi created the Balassi verse using the 19-syllable Lucretia line. The most beautiful example of love stories is Albert Gergei's Argir. This work of art was the source of Mihály Vörösmarty's Csongor and Tünde. The importance of the poem describing the adventure of the prince and the fairy in the real world and in the fairy world is that it is free from every kind of moralising element: it is a clear fairy tale. The folkloric and mythic motives of the poem fit into the conception of court love: Argir and the fairy's love dialogues are written in Balassi's poetic language. Albert Gergei's Argir is one of the greatest myths of the history of old Hungarian literature. The author claimed that he translated the poem from 'an Italian chronicle', but it has not been found so far. All the efforts to try and find the plot of the poem in the world's tale folklore and European literature have failed. There are many arguments for antique Greek, Eastern and Celtic origin, but we do not know any text that contains all the main elements of Agril's plot.

Bálint Balassi

Bálint Balassi's importance

Balassi was the founder of Hungarian love poetry and the first great figure of individual religious poetry. He was known for the latter one for a long time, since only the religious verses appeared in print long after his death. His love poems were discovered at the end of the last century in the so-called Balassi codex, which - probably - contains the fragments of 'A Book Written with his Own Hands'. The 17th-century unknown copier introduced this piece of art with the following words: "Here come Bálint Balassi's kölem-kölem type love songs, some of which praise God or warriors".

Balassi was the educated representative of Renaissance poetry: the structure of individual poems within the closed composition of the volume was sophisticated. He renewed the verse form (Balassi verse). During his career the text and the melody were separated: his early poems were still songs with musical notations - at the end of his life he left these. Balassi's innovation in genre was the court play: the Fine Hungarian Comedy, the complete text of this play was discovered only in the 1950s. In all probability he was the central figure of the poetic academy which was called 'eight young men', who competed in writing poems in Hungarian.

Balassi's love poetry

Balassi lived a passionate life. As a poet he must have known contemporary love songs. His love poems, however, were at first similar to court poetry: the man in love praises his lady as a godess, but their relationship is like a feudal hierarchy. In this early period he called the women of the poems by her own names, and used false names only later (Anna Losonczy became Julia, another became Calia ir Fulvia). This gesture shows that Balassi was quite close to the renaissance idea of poetry. After the adaptation of antique examples (Ovid) and mythic figures (Cupido) the impact of neolatin poetry (Marullus, Angerianus, Joannes Secundus) could be felt.

The renaissance features of his art were represented not only by the use of imitatio. Another important feature was compiling his poems into a composition. After the first complete unit (of 33 poems) in the Balassi codex there was a second one, probably planned to be a 33-poem cycle. The basis of this was Balassi's (Credulud - credible) and Anna's (Julia) love story: the poet described his miserable feelings about a hopeless, Petrarcan love in 25 verses. (This is called Julia cycle.)

Scholars seemed to have found the fragments of different planned volumes, or at least the possibility of it, in the incomplete life-work, which survived. His last known composed set of poems was the 'Collection without Title' - which was the only piece written in his own handwriting which survived. Each piece of the cycle is an epigramme-like brief picture containing a single verse, which is a Balassi verse.

His religious poetry

Both cycles of the Balassi codex contain religious poems - he may have planned a third cycle, containing 33 religious poems. If this had been written, the introduction of the complete volume would have been the 99-line Three Hymns to the Holy Trinity. Numbers are symbolic: three means the Holy Trinity, 33 refers to Christ's age and perhaps the age of the poet as well.

Balassi's religious songs can be called supraconfessional (nonsectarian). The reasons for this were the following facts: the poet changed his religion during his life and the collection of his religious poems was often published by both the Catholic and the Protestant church. Examining the texts the Protestant features are more dominant: the sources of his psalms were the Latin paraphrases of Theodore de Beze and George Buchanan. He also used congregational songs as sources, when he referred to his relationship with God as a direct (without a mediator) one. The gesture of seeking God and belief in God full of doubts and ambiguities seemed very modern, which was the returning motif of Balassi's religious poems.

Fine Hungarian Comedy

Cristoforo Castelletti's Amarilli (1587), an Italian pastorale, was adapted by Balassi (1588) when writing a comedy, which fit in with his love for Anna Losonczy. (The names of the heroes are Julia and Credulus, the same as in the Julia cycle.) The end of the play - in contrast to real life - is a happy ending: in the course of adventures and misunderstandings the lovers, who had lost each other and later failed to recognised each other, get married. This close is a request to Anna and it also connects the play to a humanist conception, according to which honest love ends in marriage.

In the Prologue of the play Balassi summarised his literary conceptions and goals. Besides the intention to create a new genre, the programme of enriching the Hungarian language also played a significant role. Unlike Erasmist and Protestant traditions, the topic was not history or religious moralisation, but love. The choice of topic, which was a typical renaissance one, was very modern, just like the aim of the poet to provide the reader with pleasure and entertainment (besides education).

A Soldier's Song - In laudem confiniorum (The praise of border fortresses)

This poem is a very good example of closed, proportionate structure. The first (addressing and poetic question) and the last (poetic exclamation and a request for blessing) verse out of the 9 set the work in an ode frame. Right in the middle of this, in the central line of the 5th verse the poet placed his message. These three verses (first, fifth, last) give the rhetorical frames of the poem, and they embrace 3-3 verses: 2-4 and 6-8. These phases describe the typical scenes of a warrior's life. Both internal units starts with the appearance of the 'enemy', but while the first part finishes with the peace of the night, the second one is closed with the final peace, death (as the end of the battle). The even units are vivid, while the odd ones are descriptive - accommodating to the three frame verses.

The first and the last verse are connected from a grammatical point of view as well: both subjects are the second person plural, and the warriors are addressed as 'you'. In the rest of the verses the subjects are the third person in plural. With this the poet expresses that he is inside the circle, but for the sake of authenticity he had to write these hymnic, praising words as an outsider.

János Rimay and late Renaissance literature

In the first decades of the 17th century the intellectual face of Europe underwent a serious change. The contrast between different religions became greater, ideological stands became firmer. This period was the crisis of the Renaissance. We can declare without any doubt that the humanist ideal of education did not fit the modern, practical requirements of the age any more. Bálint Balassi's students and followers tried to save his literary heritage, but they were forced to defend themselves from the strictness of the church.

Balassi's most loyal student was János Rimay. He was said to be a genius, Balassi asked and took his advice concerning his poems. At that time Rimay was only 10-12 years old. He tried to preserve the memory of his master in a moving mourning verse cycle, the Balassi epicedium (1596). This complicated piece introduced Bálint Balassi and his brother, Ferenc - who both died in the 15-year war - as models of Pallas and Mars, that is culture and valour. Epicedium, full of references to Homer, has an epic structure, which had a great impact on Miklós Zrínyi. Rimay collected and wanted to print the complete works of Balassi, but this edition was never published, only the preface is known. In this Rimay defended his master's love poetry, which - according to Rimay - was the basic condition of establishing a national literary language.

Rimay did not imitate Balassi in his love poems, but used scientific imitatio. Rimay validated the poetical requirements of humanist literature within the framework of court love (created by Balassi). This resulted in a new style, in which exaggeration, wit and disharmony dominated over the renaissance order of forms. This new style was mannerism. The concepts of the late renaissance literary programme manifested in the last spring of humanism, neostoicism. This conforming system of thoughts characterised his most beautiful poems written at his son's death. Rimay corresponded with the founder of this movement, Justus Lipsius, a Dutch philosopher. Rimay compiled a unique cycle - mixing prose with verse - in the topic of nonsectarist religion and stoic moral. His poem This World is Like a Flower is the miserable, stoic ironic equivalent of Balassi's Slodier's Song. He wanted to publish his well-structured collection of poems together with Balassi's religious songs in a single volume, but it was carried out only after his death, regardless of his wishes.

Rimay was involved in intensive literary organising activities. The authors of court type love poems were organised into a certain poet's group by Bálint Balassi himself (eight young men), and Rimay must have been a member of this group. Later he organised another unofficial literary group, bearing the name of the God Pallas, from the followers of his master. He kept in touch with Lipsius' Hungarian followers, he corresponded with the representatives of late humanism and the anti-Reformation, for example, Demeter Náprágyi and Péter Pázmány. Rimay was the first Hungarian literary critic: in his letter to György Rákóczy he judged András Prágai's stoic dignitary mirror, the Urging Hour of Principals (Bártfa, 1628), according to manierist poetry.

The spread of the anti-Reformation

After the synod of Trident (1564) the dissection of the church was inevitable. Earlier many people hoped that there might be a reconciliation. By this time, however, the Catholic church was pushed back in Hungary by the forces of the Reformation. The Catholic renewal in the 17th century headed by Péter Pázmány started from the centres which had been under Catholic authority all along: Nagyszombat and Pozsony. Miklós Telegdi - with the school and printing house of Nagyszombat behind him - was successful against Péter Bornemisza. The real chance for the recatholisation of the country was the settlement of Jesuits. These educated and devoted warriors for Catholicism tried many times to settle in both royal Hungary and Transylvania and they were able to build up their system of institutions, especially the Jesuit schools. Their first significant Hungarian representative was István Szántó, who supposedly made a complete Bible translation based on the Vulgata - but the manuscript was unfortunately lost. Thus the task of Catholic Bible translation had to be completed by another Jesuit, György Káldy. Jesuits were chased away from Hungary and Transylvania again and again: in 1603 their monastery in Kolozsvár was destroyed, but the brothers did not care about people's hate: they returned as soon as they could.

Péter Pázmány

The success of the anti-Reformation was prepared by the new political system of the period after the Bocskai revolt. At the 1608 parliament Hungarian orders made an agreement with the Habsburgs and realised that that their interests could be supported by the Catholic church. This process became irreversible through the literary, organising and conversion work of the Archbishop of Esztergom, Péter Pázmány. First he was a Jesuit, then he became a cardinal, who was a totally new and modern type of intellectual: he could be characterised by adorable preparedness, discernment, the ability to react very quickly and last but not least a talent for writing. Returning home from Italy and Graz he became the leader of Hungarian intellectual life in a very short period of time - this was even acknowledged by his Protestant opponent. He used the national language in literature mixed with excellent humour - this was his main weapon. At first it was used by the representatives of the Reformation, but later he turned it against them (for example, against the Lutheran István Magyari and the Calvinist Péter Alvinczi). (Answer, Nagyszombat, 1603; Five Fine Letters, Pozsony, 1609.) His main work was a polemic theological work built up with the help of crystal clear logic: The Guide (Pozsony, 1613), which summarises and systematised the basic Catholic principles - to defend these from the attacks of the Protestants. His opponents could hardly recover from the shock, which was caused by this book. They were forced to translate it into Latin and send it to Wittenberg, so that the theologists there could react to it. His other great work was the Preachings (Pozsony, 1636), which was published at the end of his life. His unique style is best represented in this book: he did not intend to use a decorative language but he did. His prose was fine, rich in periods, and the secret of his magic cannot be found out. We cannot really categorise him as the representative of literary baroque style. His style had a great impact on the writers of Nyugat, especially Dezső Kosztolányi.

Miklós Zrínyi

The significance of Miklós Zrínyi

He was born into an ancient Croatian-Hungarian dignitary family, his great-grandfather was the hero of the battle of Szigetvár in 1566. Zrínyi was an outstanding figure of Hungarian literary history and also a well-educated, open-minded historical personality even by European terms. He was a politician and a military leader. János Arany wrote about him that 'he was devoted to the period' and by this he meant that Zrínyi was consciously making himself modern as a politician and an artist. His devotion, taste and views on life sprang from the age. He was the rare person, whose walk of life, ideology, high morality, social rank and commitment, education and concrete activities formed a harmonious, inseparable unity. Zrínyi's most important works all reflect this many-sidedness.

As a politician he realised that there was only one chance for the independence of Hungary: if the country pushed back the Turks alone, without foreign assistance - even against the Habsburgs. In his emotional, essay-like prose, correspondence and literary works he urged the unity of Hungarian political forces, and he rose above the Catholic-Protestant opposition in this programme of unity. He dreamt of a modern Hungarian army and a strong national kingdom. His model was Attila and King Matthias, reviving the 16th-century Matthias cult with this. The amergance of ideological propaganda and literature was not very far from the Baroque idea of art.

As a writer, Zrínyi was a conscious reformer: he adopted several genres in Hungarian literature, he was the first one to print love poems, but the most important thing about him is that he wrote the first Hungarian epic poem.

The Siren of the Adriatic Sea

Zrínyi collected his poetic works into a single volume (Vienna, 1651) - similarly to Balassi and Rimay. The title of the book needs to be explained: he calls the siren Syrena, and the Adriatic Sea was the southern border of the Zrínyi estate, so we can interpret the title as 'Count Miklós Zrínyi, Hungary's poet'. In the book the epic poem is preceded by love poems, then come elegies, epigrams and a religious-patriotic ode (To the Crucifix), and finally the Peroratio. The structure is more than a chronological order. In the spiritual life of people love comes first, then male maturity - a struggle for the homeland, glory on earth - but both are destroyed by death. But fame can survive death, in Zrinyi's case it triumphed over time, and indeed, it becomes more important than religious glorification. However, this kind of immortality belongs to the warrior, not the poet.

Heroism is an important aspect of his lyrics. In his poems he followed Marino, one of the representatives of Italian baroque, but Zrínyi's tone was more tragic, dramatic and simple. He tried to introduce the usage of Hungarian versions of the Italian forms, and reformed genres and compositions.

Obsidio Szigetiana - The Sziget Disaster

The aim of the epic poem is many-sided. First of all, it is quite obvious that in recalling the memory of Turkish-Hungarian conflict he directs the reader's attention to that fact the most important goals of which is to drive out the Turks. God sent the Turks to Hungary as a punishment for sins (Verse I, 7-11), and his revenge will last for three to four generations - that is, it would end in his grand-grandson's life. God's anger and intervention has another meaning: only the true believers can defeat the pagans and save Christianity. Zrínyi's moral, religious message is in harmony with the world of ideas of the anti-Reformation, and the composition and form of the epic poem reflect baroque taste.

The basic conception of the epic poem is a paradox: he wanted to introduce the losing heroes of Szigetvár to the readers as the triumphant ones. This task corresponds to baroque ideas. The paradox was solved successfully by the author: the attacking Turkish army do not fight against the sinful Hungarian army, but a moral one. Although soldiers can be destroyed physically, they nevertheless represent moral values which crush and disperse the Turkish army. (It is also important that the poet attributes the sultan's death to his great-grandfather. 15, 97-100.) The glory of the Szigetvár heroes are ensured by the composition as well: the poem starts in Heaven with God's anger and it also finishes there, when the forgiving God raises all the heroes next to Himself (15, 107-108).

Sources

It is the poet himself who wrote about the sources in the preface: first of all he followed antique patterns, Homer and Virgil. The works of contemporary Italian epic poets had a great influence on Zrínyi, the most important one was Tasso's epic poem, Jerusalem Saved. The topic of Aeneis and that of Zrínyi's epic poem are identical. According to medieval traditions the figure of Aeneis is a Christ figure (figura Christi), that is Christ's symbol. Tasso based his own epic hero on this religious, pious model. Zrínyi's figure of his great-grandfather was more human and vivid, compared to the figures of his poet predecessors. On the other hand, for him the hero of Szigetvár was athleta Christi, that is the champion of faith, who - similarly to Christ - saves Hungarian people and gains redemption for them through his own sacrifice of blood.

In the preface Zrínyi refers to the fact that he recognised and used the works of famous humanist historiographers (the Latin works of János Zsámboky and Miklós Istvánffy), but he also added - as an important artistic principle - that he mixed history with fables.

Zrínyi also had a huge library, the inventory of which has survived in the inheritance inventory, and the majority of the books can still be found in the National and University Libraries of Zagreb. Unfortunately, the manuscript collection mentioned in the inventory did not survive. It contains Balassi's 'lascivious songs' (love poems). This piece of information is very important, firstly because it shows how Balassi's poetry spread in the decades after his death, and secondly because Zrínyi's love poems reflect the continuity of Hungarian court poetry.

Baroque court poetry

Zrínyi's work is a complicated, multifold one, so it did not become popular among the common people. However, several of his contemporaries and followers created very entertaining literature with their popular, easy-to-understand works. Literary bishops, poet canons and court priests used the effective, baroque topics of the Holy Heart, the four final things (death, judgement, hell and heaven) or judgement day. This latter one was adopted by Kristóf Darholcz in his excellent prose translation, Novissima tuba (Kassa, 1639).

The dignitary representatives of intellectual life lived in dignitary courts, and their activities were many-sided: in the service of court representation they were responsible for the heroisation of the lord's deeds and recording his family life. The most outstanding representative of this style was István Gyöngyösi, who became very popular in his lifetime. His verse epics was based on the historical tradition of Tinódi and Zrínyi. He knew Balassi's love poems, so his work of life is also the continuation of this poetic tradition. He is one of the most conscious authors from a poetic-rhetorical point of view, as is shown in the prefaces of his works. His excellent verse forms, technical skills, clear language and the ability of crate images made him the most popular writer in the 18th century. He had a great impact on the forthcoming generations. He consciously developed the Hungarian language. Although later Kazinczy accused him of spoiling the taste of the Hungarians, he considered him his predecessor as a language reformer.

Gyöngyösi's patrons were the representatives of different political circles of the age: Palatine Ferenc Wesselényi, who followed the views of Zrínyi, the poet, the court-loyal Pál Eszterházy (who was a many-sided artist himself), Imre Thököly - the chief principal of the insurrectionists (he wrote the famous epitalamium for his wedding), the pro-Austrian István Koháry, who was Thököly's prisoner for a long time and dealt with poetry, and Péter Andrássy, to whom he dedicated his work entitled Chariclia.

Puritanism and Encyclopaedism

The sudden advance of Catholicism gradually pushed back the forces of the Reformation, which became more and more elevated in the 17th century. Puritans returning from Dutch and English universities had a new view of literature in the middle of the century. He found a shelter in Zsuzsa Lorántffy ( the widow of György Rákóczi I's) court at Sárospatak. Pál Medgyesi translated one of the basic works of English Puritanism, Lewis Bayly's Praxis pietatis into Hungarian with a great rhetoric invention (Debrecen, 1636). This work is the manual of individual religion, free of external bonds, which is based on strict self-analysis. Its practical views reject mannerist 'court pomp'.

The modern ideal of education of the Puritans, the reform of education was written down by the encyclopaedists. At this time the greatest pedagogist of the period, Comenius (who searched omniscience), taught at Sárospatak. János Apáczai Csere from Transylvania studied the learning methods of encyclopaedists from the best manuals and he wanted to compile scientific knowledge into a logical system - in Hungarian, (Hungarian Encyclopaedia, Utrecht, 1653). His sources included the works of Descart, but Apáczai's cartesianism is inconsistent and ambiguous - so he could not avoid slanders. One of the most talented Protestant figures of the age was Miklós Tótfalusi Kis. He studied typography in Amsterdam. Letters set by him, the classical, so-called 'Dutch antique' letters, are still considered masterpieces in Europe today. With his technical knowledge he wanted to serve the Hungarian readers. For example, he published a sample-sized Bible in Amsterdam (1685). He corrected the Holy Scripture according to the principles of rational Bible criticism, so he had to suffer from contempt and disdain at home. His efforts to defend himself in the biographical book, Excuse (Kolozsvár, 1698), were in vein, ecclesiastic and secular authorities managing to break this self-conscious, modern, bourgeois thinker.

Writers of memoirs

The outstanding works of art of baroque prose were memoirs, diaries and autobiographies. They did not appear in print, but rather were spread in manuscripts. This was not a Hungarian phenomenon, since the memoir was a popular genre throughout Europe. This genre had some preliminaries in Hungarian literature: Mihály Vörösmarty (1572-1645) started to write his History of His Conversion in 1610 (1634). The author was a Calvinist preacher, who became a Catholic under the influence of Péter Pázmány. His book is a confession and a theological work related to religious debates.

Hungarian memoir writers were outstanding personalities, mainly politicians, whose works were usually written during imprisonment. In their memoirs they tried to clear their historical situation and deeds, so these works are consciously subjective. In spite of this fact memoirs were important historical sources.

János Kemény (1607-1662), later Transylvanian principal, wrote about the important events of his life during a period of two-year Tartar imprisonment on the Crimean peninsula. He made boring history more interesting by adding anecdotes to it.

János Szalárdi (1616-1666) wrote about the same period in his Miserable Hungarian Chronicle. Although he talks about himself in the third person singular, subjective details, descriptions make his work a memoir, rather than a historical work.

Miklós Bethlen wrote his works after the recapture of Buda and the country, but those reflect the ideas of the previous period. He considered St August and Petrarc his models. At the end of his life, during his imprisonment in Vienna he wrote Biography, in which we can read about the experiences of an educated thinker, politician and believer. Upon Zrínyi's death he participated in hunting, and we know about the details of the accident from his work.

Driving the Turks out of the country did not mean a redemption or a real period of change for either politicians or writers. Culture remained the same for a long period of time and intellectual life became even more depressed and low-spirited.

TURKISH LITERATURE

The history of literature was a neglected segment of the history of culture of the occupied regions. There are three layers in Osman literature - from the point of view of quality: folk, asic and divan literature. Another categorisation could rely on the relationship of authors with the occupied regions. According to this one there were works known in the occupied regions but written elsewhere; works written about the occupied regions and works written in the occupied regions. The first group reflects intellectual works coming to the occupied regions, the second one reflects interest in the occupied regions, while the third one reflects local intellectual activities. We are going to examine literature according to the these two different systems.

Folk poetry

There are almost no data about folk poetry, we can only suppose that the conquerers brought their folk songs with them. It is certain, however, that there were hardly any Turkish settlers in the occupied regions and the majority of soldiers were of south-Slav origin. So the 'Turkish' folk songs of the occupied regions might be Serb or Bosnian folk songs originally. There could have been a Slav folk poetry mixed with Muslim elements similar to that of Bosnia at the beginning of our century. We have some data about Turkish folk songs, though: several songs mention the fall of Buda and the other important fortresses. These were known not only in the Balkans (Ignác Kúnos collected such songs in Ada Kale), but also in Anatolia.

Asic poetry

Turkish minstrels are called asics. Their art was basically verbal, and their songs were accompanied by musical instruments - copuz or chogur. Recordings from the beginning of the 16th century included a mature, clear style, which is still in use today with minor changes. The origin of asic poetry is double: on the one hand it derived from traditional Turkish culture before the spread of the Islam. Verses are syllabic, their structure is the so-called kosma-form. On the other hand - in contrast to this - the content and composition is connected to Persian love and mythic poetry. Several events, and pictures are the mirror translations of the original Persian work of art.

The asics were the ceremonial musicians and hymn writers of a special Turkish religion - the alevi-bektasi religion, popular among the nomadic people of Anatolia, the bektasi dervish sect sprang from this group. As the yanichars - although just formally - belonged to the bektasi sect, the asics appeared on the battlefields, too. The asic poetry was well-known and practiced in the occupied regions. Firstly because minstrels were popular in border fortresses, among soldiers; secondly because the bektasi dervishes who settled here spread it. The most famous centre was Gül Baba's residence in Buda, but there were monasteries in Eger, Fehérvár and Lippa.

Several Christian travel accounts, charters or Muslim chronicles mention the asics of the occupied regions. Turkish manuscripts, which preserved their poems, also serve as proof of their existence (for example, the Palatics codex). A lot of names are mentioned in sources from the occupied territories. One of them, Kul Piri, wrote about the death of a Turkish warrior, Deli Bajadzid, who died in a battle near Tata. Another one - Ramazan - compared the beauty of Buda to that of Bagdad. Karadjaoglan described the loot of Petersbourgh, Asic Hassan Temesvári Gázi cried over the loss of the occupied regions.

Besides the local poets there were several others, who stayed for only a short period, or a few campaigns. Gevheri, one of the most significant asics of the 17th century, mourned an aga of Eger. His contemporary, Asic Ömer threatened the 'German king' with another Mohács disaster. Üdüskari sang about the conquest of Érsekújvár, while Mustafa Kul remembered the bloody waves of the river Danube. Poets wandering from campaign to campaign and the wandering dervishes exchanged literary information between the different parts of the occupied territory. It is not surprising that the works of asics who never visited these regions were widely known. The songs of Abdal Kajgasus of the 14th century must have been brought by bektasi dervishes. Asic Kerem represented Turkish stories (hikaye) in the conquered regions. There was also a similar love story in Hungarian literature as well, it was called Karadjagoglan and Sultan Ismigan.

Divan literature

Divan poetry was formed under the influence of Arab-Persian literature, which was based on rhythmic verses (aruz). But the Turkish language was less suitable for metric poetry, and this was a great difficulty for poets: either the language or the verse became imperfect. The solution was brought by the change of literary language: it was gradually filled with Arab or Persian words, with the help of which it became suitable for metric lines. This language - the osmanli - was used only by the cultural elite, simple people did not understand it. The 'osmanification' of the language reached its peak in the 18-19th centuries.

The Osman language - as a language layer - reached every part of the empire, so it was also known in the occupied regions of Hungary. It was used in administration and religion, taught in the medresek, and of course, all literary works were written in this language.

The basic element of divan poetry was the beyt, most of the verse forms were built from this: the gazel, the caside and the mesnevi. There were other minor verse forms, for example, the murabba or the muhammes. Poems were either collected into a volume by the poet (divan), or they were compiled in anthologies (medjuma).

Divan poetry was well-known in the occupied regions of Hungary. The works of the great predecessors (Nizami, Sadi, Ahmedi) as well as contemporaries (Fuzuli, Hataji, Zati, Revani, Muhibbi, that is Suleyman the Great) were all popular. Local poets were also known. Mehmed Vüdjüdi sang about the beauty of Buda, Hisali remembered Gül Baba. Dervish Lamekani was brought up in Pest, Miri in Buda. Saji was a kadhi in Szigetvár. Tasli-jali Jajha begh fought in all the campaigns of Suleyman and wrote his works on his estate in Zvornik. According to Evlia Chelebi the most outstanding poets of Buda were Gazi Chelebi, Nazi Chelebi and Sami Chelebi in the middle of the 17th century.

The other branch of divan poetry included narrative poems and novels in verse (masnevi). The great classics of the genre were read in the occupied regions: Mevlana's Masnevi or Firdaus's Sahname. The paraphrases of Fuzuli's Opium and Wine was written by Crimean khan, Gazi Girej II in Pécs (Coffee and Wine), although this work was lost.

The name of mesnevis which described military events was gazavaname. Many of them were about wars in Hungary: the occupation of Buda, Esztergom, Siklós, Győr, Kanizsa. The most popular topic was the siege of Szigetvár. Even though some authors participated in military campaigns, their works were not written there. The mesnevi about the heroes of Görösgál was interesting because it could have been written by the local kadhi and it was preserved in the Pecsev chronicle. On the basis of its name Gyulevi (Gyula) might have been from the occupied regions, he mentioned the siege of the fortress of Gyula.

From among the prosaic works of divan literature only the historical ones deal with the occupied regions in Hungary. The majority of them describes the history of the Osman dynasty (Nesri, Sadeddin, Pasha Lufti). The continuation of these works are Ibrahim Pecseri (of Pécs)'s chronicle using Istvánffy and Heltai as sources and Kjatib Chelebi's work. There were stories about the glory of rulers, such as the Suleymannames, where we can find references to Hungary (Jelalzade). Some of them described only a military campaign, like Kemalpasazade's Mohács-name, a copy of which was made by Ibrahim bin Ali in Szolnok in 1575. (This work is also the only memory of miniature printing of the conquered regions.) Chronicles about the pashas of Buda, like Mustapha Sokullu and Hassan Tiryaki represent local stories. The Tarih Üngürüs (The History of Hungary) is a special one, which was written by Mahmud Terjuman of Hungarian origin.

Travel descriptions, scientific, religious and mystic essay also belong to divan prose. The most significant travel description is Evlia Chelebi's Seyahatname, which is the most important source of the cultural history of the conquered regions. A less important example is Behram Dimiski's brief essay from the end of the 17th century. There were scientific and religious works in each medrese. A school book, which contains the explanation of the Koran, law and poetry, also survived. The teachers of medreses (hodjas) sometimes wrote their own books. Ömer Efendi, one of the professors in Buda, compiled a book on law, and Ibrahim's essays on the law of Buda (mufti fetva) were also collected in a book. Ali Dede, a guard of Suleyman's turbe, wrote mystic essays. Ahmed Dede worked in the mevlev monastery of Pécs. Ahmed Bidjan's mystic writing from the 15th century was available in Hungarian: Gábor Bethlen's Turkish student, János Házi translated it into Hungarian and it was printed in Kassa in 1626.

The influence of Turkish literature

Cultural relationships between the Turks and the Hungarians were first of all financial; there were hardly any in the field of literature. Bálint Balassi knew the poetry of the conquerers very well. Two of his songs were written under the influence of asic poems, following their melody patterns. The source of the third one, which was translated into Hungarian quite freely, is not known. He collected Turkish beyts - which belonged to divan poetry - and their reinterpreted translations into a book. Besides Balassi's works only a few poems were of Turkish origin: a poem in asic form, but in Hungarian, and a bilingual one in murabba form, and a couple of Turkish songs of unknown origin. We can presume, however, that several motifs of Hungarian love poems are of Turkish origin.